billbindc

This strikes me as more a maneuver vis a vis the US in response to the balloon disaster than anything else. China knows that the US has enormous conventional escalatory advantages in Ukraine and it also knows that if there's one thing that absolutely unites US politics is the prospect of conflict with the PRC. Rapidly ramping up aid to Kyiv would be the easiest sell in Washington if China was the perceived foe in addition to Russia.

I really don't buy Malofeyev's line of thinking. Putin has never tried to recreate a Soviet style Stalinism because it simply isn't possible in current conditions. The Stalinist state was highly mobilized throughout each layer of the systema with multiple layers that proactively worked to reinforce the primacy of the Boss without any need for direct control. Putin's Russia is based on demobilization with very direct control because there isn't any proactive aspects to it whatsoever. In fact, the current systema sees proactive engagement as a direct potential threat to the current order. The ersatz Stalinism you are seeing now is certainly frightening and upsetting but it's the fallback, not the Pinochet model Putin was attempting to cement.

Where can we help post bail?

Why you are flat wrong: We have spent $30 billion on this war so far, much of which is actually recycled back into the American economy. That's equivalent to something like 4% of our defense budget to cripple the biggest threat to the global political order in half a century or more. This war is less than a year old and Russia has already lost about half of the territory it gained. It isn't our "foreign adventure" it is Russia's...which has repeatedly said Moldova and the Baltics are next. Which means NATO...and we certainly intend on defending it hell or high water and obviously should.

Meh. "Gazafication" where it already exists depends on the utter conventional dominance of the IDF and the complete penetration of the client adversary by Shin Bet, et al. And that is all underpinned by the enormous economic mismatch between the two. Russia possesses nothing close to those advantages and as time has passed the balance has gone further against it. If you are looking for a model, something between India/Pakistan and RKO/DPRK is a likelier outcome.

A month ago I was saying this but it's clear now that there are very strong forces in Chinese government that are set on confrontation. Whether they made the balloon incident occur or if they simply took advantage of it, their approach is clearly ascendant. We should keep our power dry.

The two most likely GOP nominees right now have both come out as something between skeptical to outright hostile to supporting Ukraine in this war while their majority of their voters and those that represent the GOP in Congress are supportive. It's obviously exploitable fault line that Biden's campaign is already mining.

We will be voting on funding this war...or it's near aftermath...in November of 2024 and it will correctly be defined as the most important decision we have made as a global power since the early Cold War. Ukraine will be on the ballot and it's quite likely to be the decisive factor.

Two things: 1. It sends a clear message to Russians that not only is the US president behind Ukraine but that he thinks Ukraine can win and that either Russia is afraid to attack him or that it is unable to. I've been watching Russian tv this morning and you can see the propagandists struggling with it. They are a mixture of appalled and outraged. 2. That bit of theater has elevated Ukraine even further as a political issue in US politics. Biden is nailing our flag to the mast on this issue. He is trying to turn it into one of just a few main themes of 2024 and given how DeSantis stepped into it on Fox this week, Republicans intend on going along with it.

As a Russian commentator said (before they realized it was happening) Biden going to Kyiv is saying that Biden expects Kyiv to win. That is exactly how it's being read in Russia. That it was timed to big foot Putin's speech tomorrow, that it was done with Israeli cover, that the optics were superb are all bad enough. Biden walking nonchalantly through an air raid alert with a subdued Secret Service detail is an absolute kick in the nuts to Moscow's propaganda. Also: https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/02/one-year-after-russias-invasion-of-ukraine.html

Just saw polling today that only about 10% of Republicans, Democrats and Independents approve of Vladimir Putin. That's across the board. Amazing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/18/norfolk-southern-derailment-ohio-train-safety/

It will never not make me laugh that the party that's now bitching about money spent in Ukraine...as opposed to Ohio...were the same party that gutted the regulations that would have done much to stop or mitigate the East Palestine disaster. And to drag this back on topic...that 5% of the US budget spent on Ukraine to wreck the Russian army is pretty much the bargain of the millennium. Stop having yourselves on.

What’s especially interesting is that it was done under the rubric of an official Israeli delegation. Russia was told only about 2 hours ahead of time. That tells us that Israel is not going to let the Russian dalliance with Iran slide and sure enough today they announced more air defense aid.

That is the supposition given that there was a kink in the line at that point and that the Danes have not said any explosives evidence was discovered at that location. We don't *know* at this point but it is the most reasonable and simplest conclusion based on the evidence that we do have.

The most compelling explanation I have seen is the above. Russia had numerous motivations, both strategic and contractual, to explode the pipelines and it looks pretty clear that an accident forced their hand. In addition, the ships Hersh claimed did it where nowhere near the location and in one case was not even in service yet. His role as a conduit for Russian misinformation continues.

Yes. Putin wanted a 'win' to talk about next week. More grist for my argument that Russia is as much fighting the war as a political argument in Moscow as it is fighting it in a military sense in the Donbas.

I doubt they planned on getting out for quite a while. They expected an easy war but the high likelihood is that they expected to advance to the Dnieper/Kyiv and stay for quite a while.

The foundation of reactionary politics in US is that many ordinary people live in relative luxury but imagine it is penury and that their kids won’t do as well as they did (Trump support was overwhelmingly from folks making above $50k/year). Their antipathy to immigrants is that they worry they might actually do this whole America thing better. Ukraine’s reactionary politics is being crushed by this war. The oligarchs simply can’t compete in a society where corruption is a barrier to throwing out the hated Russian bear. And regular people are learning they can fight a war, use social contacts to supply an army, self fund tank destroyer units. It’s civic empowerment in the most accelerated way. You can see in things like that video from a few months ago where a police checkpoint was shaking down drivers. The local TD unit found out and came and arrested them all. One can see this sort of attitude in Vietnam. For all of that nation’s problems, people have a sense of identity and a confidence that is pretty amazing. It makes them much more powerful than their mere numbers suggest.

Within the humor is an excellent point. Anyone who told you in 1979 that Asia was going to be the peaceful, prosperous engine of global growth in 2023 would have been laughed out of the room. While I remain a pessimist on Russia, there's plenty to see in Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe that suggests a better future.

There is no evidence at all that Putin and his cronies are acting irrationally within their own zeitgeist. The nukes haven't been put in a use posture, and they haven't made direct threats to use nukes offensively. If anything, when it comes to acts Russia has been careful to refrain from escalatory behavior towards NATO and the US. Where I worry is that Putin and his cronies have been content to let a lot of loose and apocalyptic talk about nukes flourish in their kept media. It's starting to seep into the culture. That's what happened to Japan. Things that had been unthinkable in 1925 were acceptable by 1945 like tokko operations and "body-crashing" tactics. In other words, I don't worry too much about this war. I worry what a broken Russia might do in the next one.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS?locations=RU

Only 25% of the Russian population is rural.

I don't think we are that far along yet if only for the fact that the leadership of the Russian military/Wagner seem to be in no rush themselves to grab up the katana and charge the lines in Bakhmut. But what *is* happening looks like each sector of the military is being asked "What have you done to show your loyalty to the Russkiy Mir?" and off they send the boys to oblivion. There simply isn't the pre-existing cult of faux bushido that the Japanese military had ingested for 20 years before WWII. But they are working towards something similar, surely.

I was *just* describing the way the Japanese air forces were used starting in '44 to a friend in reference to this. In both cases, the apocalyptic language and the completely internal logic of national honor dominates.